


Koročun

by tisiph0ne



Category: Original Work, World War II - Fandom
Genre: (sort of), Gen, Human Sacrifice, Nazisploitation, Revenge, Torture, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22083424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisiph0ne/pseuds/tisiph0ne
Summary: Ritual slaughter for the winter solsticeOnce upon a time at the Eastern Front (a German officer falls into enemy hands)...
Kudos: 3





	Koročun

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for a small Christmas exchange over at [Dreamwidth](https://nazisploitation.dreamwidth.org/807.html).

He looked up at her when she set down the lamp on the mud floor, craning his neck as much as his bonds would allow. He would have begged if they had not gagged him, she could see it in his eyes. _Help me, please_ , they seemed to say. _Have mercy._

It was easy to imagine the words. She had heard him beg before, during the interrogation, broken little pleas, scraps in her own language, but most of it in his mother tongue, alien to her ears. She hadn't been in the room when they'd tortured him, but she had listened at the closed door, eager not to miss anything that went on inside. 

At first there hadn't been much to be overheard. Curt questions about the enemy's strength, positions, strategies; then the translation into German, Cousin Alyosha's voice unfamiliar as he uttered the foreign words; finally stubborn silence.

“You know how this goes,” the partisan commander had finally said, irritation heavy in his tone. “Either you tell us or we're going to make you.”

A thrill of excitement had ran down her spine. No soldier would betray his comrades if he had as much as the semblance of a choice. They would have to take that illusion of choice away from him, force the truth out of him, make him tell what they wanted to know – and they would do so, with all means necessary. After all, it wasn't just their freedom at stake, but their sheer survival.

And sure enough, soon they stepped up their game, determined to beat every last secret out of their prisoner. The noises he made were outright pitiful. All the groans and cries and sobs should have softened the hardest of hearts, the sounds of fists, of boots, of bats against his flesh, the crunch and crack of bones turned the strongest stomach.

Perhaps a better woman would have felt pity for him, but all Olena felt was satisfaction.

There hadn't been much left of his prettiness once they were done with him. They tied him into a neat little bundle and left him out in the stable for her like an early Christmas present.

An odd sense of happiness spread through her as she studied the results of the torture. His lip was split, his face swollen, bruises blooming all over his skin like poisonous flowers, his hair caked with blood. Maybe Olena would have felt sorry for him, even though he was the enemy, if she hadn't witnessed first hand what he had done to deserve this.

But the memory of his smugness was still vivid before her mind's eye, his infuriating smugness impossible to forget.

It had been a brisk winter day a few weeks ago, the sky a deep blue, the sun softening the sharp edge of the cold for a couple of hours. Everyone had been ordered to gather in the village square to listen to the German officer's speech. And what a grand speech it had been, its arrogance hardly mellowed by the choppy translation of the interpreter. Nothing he said had left much doubt about his beliefs, about why his people had come here in the first place.

They thought it was their right to occupy their land and treat them like cattle. Where the kings and tsars and emperors of past times had invoked God's mandate, they brought forward a much more earthly claim: nature had made them superior to the peoples of the east, and invading their country was as natural to them as it is for a wolf to kill a sheep.

To them, it was just the way things were, and it didn't even occur to them the villagers might be in the right to resist them, that it was only natural they'd take up arms against the enemy. They were hanging partisans as bandits, and on that bright sunny day, two of Olena's cousins were among their number. They killed him without proof, just for being Aloysha's brothers, and they thought they'd get away with it.

Now all those German soldiers were dead. The partisans had ambushed them the day before, shot them were they stood. They'd killed all but one. For the last one they hadn't had a bullet to spare, not even when they were done with him.

They beat him bloody and left him to the villagers' mercy.

“Do with him as you please,” the partisan commander had said instead of good-bye before he and his men disappeared back into the woods, taking Alyosha with them. Olena knew it was unlikely she'd see him again. He was off to give his life for their freedom, and it filled her with pride.

Now it was on her to do her part and exact revenge on her family's behalf.

She looked at her captive. Stripped of his uniform, he was just like any other man. Helpless. Vulnerable. Not so high and mighty anymore. His bonds twisted him in an unnatural position, his muscles straining against the skin. He was well-fed. Healthy. The thought filled her with rage but also with a strange sort of tenderness.

She reached out to touch his hair. It stuck to his head, filthy and damp with sweat. She wondered how it would feel freshly washed. She imagined how it would feel to his wife, or even his mother. Silky and soft, golden in the sunlight.

“You know,” she said, “we're not too different, you and I.”

He shivered under her fingertips. She couldn't tell if he was cold or afraid. Perhaps they had hit him so hard something had ruptured inside him and he was lying here dying already. She hoped not. She hoped it would be her that ended him.

“It's almost Christmas you know,” Olena said. “The feast of love and peace. We should drink together and eat and celebrate the birth of our saviour as good Christians must.”

She couldn't know if he understood anything of what she said. A few words perhaps. She didn't care. Almost gently, she traced a cut across his cheekbone, making him flinch.

“But it's not who we are, deep down. We're not Christians. Not really. And in times like these when blood soaks the ground and death sweeps across the land we remember.”

She pushed her fingertips into the wound and he went stiff with pain. Realization spread black as ink in his eyes.

Olena lowered her voice as if to tell him a secret. “We remember the old ways, and the old gods.” She reached for the bundle she brought along to retrieve her knife.

He made muffled sounds into his gag now, his whole body tense, struggling against the ropes. The blade glinted in the dim light of the lamp.

“Tonight is _Koročun_ ,” Olena said, “the longest night of the year.”

She rolled him over and slipped her knife under his under-shirt. It went through the fabric with ease. It was a sharp knife. They normally used it for gutting pigs. How appropriate.

She set it to his skin, just below the sternum. “Before my people became Christians, they worshipped the Black God on this day. We prayed to the darkness to cede its power. Tonight it is me who is going to pray.”

She put her whole weight behind the knife when she leaned down, piercing the skin and fat and muscle. Blood seeped out, dark and thick. The prisoner jerked like a fish out of water, he struggled as much as his bonds would allow, but Olena was stronger than she looked. She dragged the blade downwards, opening his stomach.

Olena had done this before. With pigs though, and the pigs had been dead. It was strange to cut someone open that – who – was still bleeding, but it was also beautiful: the yellowish white fat, the pink and red and glistening guts. She only regretted she couldn't hear his screams and pleas and moans and whimpers of pain.

Look at it as a small mercy, she told herself. At least you grant him that semblance of dignity.

It took him a good long while to die and Olena cherished every moment of it, every second a tribute to the dark and the chaos that slumbered in the land, an ancient, almost forgotten fierceness. She would raise that powers again, they would rise and fight and defeat their enemies, slaughter them like pigs if they must.

The late winter sun already crept in through the cracks of the wood when the German breathed his last, resting in a pool of his own blood and Olena stood, wiping her knife clean on her skirts.

From now on, things would change...


End file.
